WEBVTT
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00:00:41.359When we think about justice, we think about it as an abstract.
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00:00:44.479Something that happens to someone else, somewhere else.
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00:00:52.240But justice and the law regulate every aspect of our interactions with each other, with organizations, with the government.
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00:00:57.600We never think about it until it impacts our lives or those of someone else.
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00:01:11.120Our guests are women with little experience with the justice system, whether as victims or women who have committed crimes, people at the forefront of civic action who put their lives of aligned to demand a better world.
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00:01:19.280We ask them to share their insight into how we might repair a broken and harmful system with humanity and dignity.
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00:01:24.640We also speak with people who are in the heart of the justice system, creating important change.
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00:01:31.040Judges, barristers, human rights campaigners, mental health advocates, artists and healers.
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00:01:34.959Today we've got Dr.
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00:01:36.799Bissy Akintoy.
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00:01:44.239She is a criminologist whose research focuses on the intersection between race, drugs, policing, and youth experiences.
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00:01:58.719She's been an author on numerous research papers exploring the role played by race and racism in the treatment of black communities by police and the criminal justice system, always applying an intersectional lens to experiences and explored.
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00:02:00.879Bissy, would you like to introduce yourself?
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00:02:02.799I would, thanks, Louisa.
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00:02:04.239Nice to be here.
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00:02:15.680Wonderful.
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00:02:24.879Okay, so first um I understand that you've got you focused a lot on intersexuality and how that impacts different individuals.
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00:02:34.800If we understand where the framework first started, it was sort of began 35 years ago with a woman named Kimberly Crenshaw.
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00:02:49.840In that time, how much do you think the criminal justice system has actually moved in understanding that black women's experiences can't be disengaged separated into race issues on one hand and women's issues on the other?
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00:02:51.280It's a good first question.
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00:02:57.840I think the first and most accurate answer is that the system's kind of moved in language more than in practice.
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00:03:04.479So intersectionality, in the way that Kimberly Crenshaw argued, is that it's not, we can't can't think about these things as add-ons.
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00:03:10.159So we don't think about race and gender and class and immigration separately.
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00:03:22.479You know, we have to adopt this kind of anti-racist and feminist analysis that looks at these interlocking oppressions and how these multiple forms of oppression can affect people's lives experience.
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00:03:36.319So intersectionality is really kind of core to correcting how institutions erase black women by forcing their experiences into these kind of single category frameworks of either race or gender or class.
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00:03:46.800So the way Crenshaw kind of describes it, it's like, you know, black women aren't simply race and gender added together, but it's this distinct experience, you know, this distinct form of kind of structural harm.
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00:03:55.199Um to your question, I think there's been, there has been more awareness in policy and research and public discourse, um, even of the term itself.
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00:03:59.840I think it's a term that I guess the average person wouldn't have heard of um 10 years ago.
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00:04:14.800But you know, when we look at the persistence of disproportionality across the criminal justice system, you know, from stop and search through to arrest, caution, conviction, all the way through, we can see that that awareness hasn't been matched by, you know, actual institutional transformation.
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00:04:18.720I think there has been some kind of rhetorical adoption of intersectionality.
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00:04:34.800So, for example, in the like Equality Act 2010, um, like certain diversity strategies, some examples of like MOJ reporting um kind of highlights these kind of multiple oppressions that Crenshaw talks about when she speaks about intersectionality.
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00:04:51.680Um, you know, but for example, in the LAMI review um of 2017 of you know structural inequality in the criminal justice system, it highlighted systemic bias, but it was still kind of largely focused on um you know race in the context of male-dominated pathways.
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00:04:57.680So, like, you know, this kind of classic experience of like the criminalized, like racialized black male.
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00:05:11.680Um it, but you know, but in practice, you know, in the criminal justice context, it means that black women are still too often treated either as women in ways that center white femininity or as black people in ways that center black masculinity.
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00:05:17.199So they're kind of falling between those kind of two gaps, like overlooked in the race research and in the gender research.
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00:05:21.519So their lives are really kind of really rarely analyzed on their own terms.
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00:05:28.480I think the criminal justice system and you know the system more broadly tends to kind of silo inequality.
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00:05:37.920So we see race disparity reports that are separate from gender defending, but we don't have that kind of more complex picture of how black and brown women actually experience a criminal justice system.
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00:05:44.319So black and brown women kind of become statistically invisible, kind of falling between these kind of two frameworks.
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00:05:51.040So when we actually look at the criminal justice outcomes, they're not, you know, those experiences aren't read as kind of structurally connected.
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00:05:57.920They're kind of you know ongoingly treated in a fragmented way, which is exactly what intersectionality is trying to address.
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00:06:04.240Yes, I mean you touched upon how the conversation often defaults onto young black men.
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00:06:11.120And although it is an incredibly important topic to discuss, what do you feel like gets missed when black women are left out of that frame?
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00:06:12.959Yeah, I mean, I I'd agree with you.
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00:06:13.920It is incredibly important.
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00:06:18.959And like, you know, when we look at the numbers, that is like, you know, that is the kind of the dominant phenomenon.
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00:06:30.959Um, so you know, it does make sense to a to a point that this discussion should focus on the criminalized black male because black men have been historically criminalized and racialized, um, you know, in like in the West, like in Britain.
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00:06:38.480But what it does mean is the experiences of black women and girls kind of remain hidden, like remain visible, like, you know, relatively unexplored.
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00:06:44.959So I'd say, you know, the policing of black women and girls has kind of increasingly come into focus in recent years.
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00:06:51.920So I'm thinking about, you know, in the context of kind of female gang membership and drug careering, you know, drug law enforcement, that kind of thing.
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00:06:57.360Um black girls who are victims of abuse or exploitation are often misidentified as perpetrators.
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00:07:05.040Um, so that's a pattern that we kind of see in cases of child sexual exploitation, um, county lines, drugs, and gangs.
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00:07:10.079Um, so we've had a lot of attempts at reform over the years, but they've been kind of unsuccessful.
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00:07:13.360And we haven't been able to tackle some of these disproportionalities.
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00:07:31.040What we tend to see with the you know experiences of black women and girls in the criminal justice system is instead of safeguarding what they're getting too frequently is you know surveillance, punishment, criminalization, racialization in a way that really mirrors the experiences of their male counterparts.
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00:07:40.480And I think you know what that highlights is whose vulnerability is recognized, whose vulnerability is protected, who's believed by institutions.
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00:07:51.839Um, you know, the dominant public narrative usually focuses on, you know, police, you know, coercive policing practices, you know, stop and search, street level enforcement, gang discourse.
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00:08:00.720So, you know, while those things are important, um what they can do in reality and practice is to obscure some of these quieter forms of control that shape black women's lives.
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00:08:16.480So thinking about things like you know, school exclusion, uh, you know, welfare, surveillance, things like housing insecurity, intimate partner violence, you know, maternal, um, poor maternity care, you know, health care inequalities.
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00:08:29.519Um so when the conversation defaults to young black men, what happens in practice is we kind of lose sight of the fact that black women are criminalized through different and more invisible pathways.
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00:08:51.039Um, so you know, there's been some research done by the Prison Reform Trust that shows that you know black, Asian, and uh minority ethnic women are overrepresented in you know women's prison populations, and these disadvantages are really compounded by racial and gender discrimination in custody and then also kind of in broader society.
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00:09:08.720Um, also similarly, the Institute of Race Relations has kind of documented these really serious disparities that affect black women and girls, including racialized use of strip search and you know, wider overrepresentation of black and minority ethnic people, including women, throughout the criminal justice system.
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00:09:19.679So leaving black women out kind of means we miss how racism and sexism, you know, institutionalized misogyny combine to make them seem more likely to be seen as, you know, kind of non-protectable.
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00:09:27.759So not seen as innocent enough to be treated as victims, but not visible enough to be counted properly as people who are harmed or experience harm.
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00:09:46.240So, for example, you know, a black woman or a black girl who's been repeatedly sexually exploited can end up being criminalized for the consequences of the act of that exploitation in the context of county lines, for example, um, while the original harm, you know, the sexual exploitation of that black woman or girl receives little institutional attention.
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00:09:53.440So the institution becomes concerned at the point of the criminality, but not at the initial point of vulnerability.
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00:10:06.559Uh so you know, that violence against black women and girls is often less likely to be recognized as exploitation and much more likely to be criminalized in keeping with the kind of broader criminalization of ethnic minority communities in Britain overall.
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00:10:15.679So what we're missing is, you know, how kind of race, gender, poverty, and victimization all kind of intersect in these cycles of criminalization.
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00:10:28.399Um, you know, the really broad issue is that when you know black women's experiences are absent from the picture, so when we try to think of policy solutions, we're not thinking about the population overall.
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00:10:33.120And that tends to reproduce inequality rather than address it or reduce it.
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00:10:33.600Yeah.
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00:10:47.120I mean, how do you, if we talk about young women of colour, how do you feel like that early systematic racism for those who do uh turn into sort of an offending lifestyle, how do you feel like that plays a part into that beginning?
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00:10:48.720I think it plays a really huge part.
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00:10:58.559I think early systemic racism really shapes life courses and it shapes life chances before you know there's even any opportunity for an offense to occur.
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00:11:07.840You know, like it starts in schools, it starts in you know neighborhoods, in housing, in healthcare, in you know, community policing.
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00:11:20.480Um, and then it kind of more generally starts with this kind of everyday expectation that black girls are harder or older or more resilient than their peers, kind of less, less vulnerable.
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00:11:36.720Um, so you know, research looking at black women's experiences in the criminal justice system shows that, you know, kind of we're kind of routinely seen as troublemakers, you know, really heavily supervised, um, given harder, harsher punishments than you know, white female counterparts.
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00:11:45.200Um, for a lot of young black women, the pathway into offending isn't, it's not often not like a kind of linear story of individual choice.
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00:11:48.879It's often about, you know, what you might call cumulative disadvantage.
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00:11:58.080So it's things like exclusion from school, um, instability at home, poverty, mental health, strain, um, you know, coercion, exploitation, all those things.
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00:12:17.279So these things really matter because black girls are often kind of criminalized through relational and survival-based pathways rather than some of the other, you know, the modes of criminalization that like we often talk about in the media, the kind of more stereotypical models that are used in when we talk about youth offending.
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00:12:27.759Um, so you know, from my research takes an intersectional approach to look at the lived experience of racialized policing uh in a neighborhood in North London.
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00:12:53.039And so I spoke to a you know a number of young people, um, boys and girls, um, and you know, their parents and community workers to try and get an insight into how um police, heavy policing of you know this very heavily policed neighborhood, um, what kind of impact that has had on communities, on young people, on their sense of self, on their um identity and their status and all those sorts of things.
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00:13:01.519You know, we have the data that shows young black people get stop and search significantly more than their white counterparts, often for drug offenses.
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00:13:08.480Um, but there's not necessarily that much insight also always into how that disproportionality is experienced.
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00:13:21.440So what I found in my research looking at black girls was they're kind of disproportionately subjected to stop and search in the same way a lot of the boys are, and also, you know, kind of more likely to be treated as suspects rather than victims.
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00:13:32.559So I spoke to lots of young black girls and women who reported being followed, harassed, and approached aggressively by police officers during routine interactions.
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00:13:41.840Um, other research finds, you know, black women are much more likely to be imprisoned for drug offenses than their white counterparts, also overrepresented in use of forced data.
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00:13:49.759Um, one thing that complicates this analysis is there's a real lack of disaggregated data on race and gender and policing statistics.
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00:13:58.879So, what I mean by that is um there's no we don't have a full picture of how many black women get stop and search, or how many Muslim women get stop and search, for example.
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00:14:04.480So there's incomplete and separate data that kind of can focus on either gender or race.
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00:14:14.720So most police data sets and you know, some of the data the Home Office releases doesn't account for black women, black females as a specific category.
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00:14:19.919So that makes it really difficult to measure the scale of you know racialized policing that they face.
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00:14:35.279Uh, we do know that um there's been an increase in stop and search of women, and the majority of that um is black women, and black women have also accounted for an increase in use of force incidents by the police, despite representing only 2% of the population.
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00:14:40.480Um, it's a thing that comes up in the media once in a while, not very often.
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00:14:45.440I'm thinking of, you know, the um child cue, which is a case that I'm sure a lot of your listeners will be aware of.
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00:14:52.960So that's the 15-year-old girl in Hackney who was strip searched by the police at um her school with no adult present.
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00:15:03.360And in the review of that case, one of the kind of core findings, like one of the reasons that um it happened, was um identified to be adultification bias.
00:15:03.519 -->
00:15:07.360So that's you know, where black girls are perceived as older and less innocent.
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00:15:26.480Um, so that's like that case study was a really good example of what a lot of black girls are experiencing, but without much, I don't know, that there historically has tended to be not much focus or not much discussion about the specific ways black girls experience harm, you know, in these various settings inside and outside of the criminal justice system.
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00:15:40.320Um yeah, I mean, there's a more recent data has shown that black children are disproportionately subject to strip searches in school and custody settings, often without, you know, appropriate adult supervision, just like in the case of child cue.
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00:15:54.080And, you know, black girls are disproportionately subject to surveillance and punished in educational settings, you know, drawing on some of these kind of long-standing stereotypes of like black girls being aggressive, you know, stereotypes of the angry black women and all that kind of thing.
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00:16:02.879Um in the like in the school context, you know, black Caribbean pupils are much more likely to be excluded than white British pupils.
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00:16:11.440And that matters because exclusion is one of the kind of strongest predictors of um involvement in youth justice or being drawn into the criminal justice system.
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00:16:26.480So, for example, you know, a girl who's like kind of repeatedly excluded from school can become more exposed to unsafe relationships or um, you know, peer networks that offer belonging, but then also kind of increase the likelihood of risk of being drawn into criminal networks.
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00:16:33.759Um so and then, you know, by the time the system notices this girl, like it can be in a punitive mode rather than a preventative mode.
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00:16:44.240I think we also do tend to miss some of the other broader pictures, like things like maternal separation and you know, the care system overlap and mental health pathways into offending.
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00:16:54.559So these systemic inequalities, systemic racism, they increase the likelihood of punishment and they also create the conditions that make punishment much more likely in the first place.
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00:17:04.400I mean, your research just shows how important that sort of youth experience is into preventing going into that offending lifestyle.
00:17:04.559 -->
00:17:17.279How would you how important would you say schemes that you know help underrepresented communities in employment are in terms of aiding young people, avoiding going into a criminal lifestyle or being involved in youth violence?
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00:17:23.119Because you know there's a rise in very harmful political parties that are trying to take that away.
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00:17:26.240So, how important would you say it is employment schemes?
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00:17:32.240I think they're crucial, but I think they're only crucial when they're actual actually substantive and not just symbolic.
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00:17:33.599Um, yeah.
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00:17:45.920Lots of research, government's own data and analysis when we talk about race disparities, has highlighted the importance of education, training, um, social mobility.
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00:17:49.759All of these things really determine outcomes for young people.
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00:18:02.480Um so even, you know, when that research or that data has not necessarily highlighted the significance of race, it still highlighted the importance of um these like employment schemes and these kind of pathways.
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00:18:16.960Um and you know, lots of, I won't go into like too much academic research, but lots of research around desistence or, you know, stopping people from committing crimes shows that employment is really linked to reducing reoffending, particularly for people once they're coming out of prison.
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00:18:23.519Because it can be very difficult for people to find employment outside, you know, after being incarcerated.
00:18:23.759 -->
00:18:27.519It could be very difficult to even just get a job, let alone hold one down.
00:18:27.680 -->
00:18:35.359But for black women and girls especially, what we have more broadly is, you know, labor market discrimination really persists.
00:18:35.599 -->
00:18:42.240There's um there are examples of lots of examples actually of like um bias around people's names.
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00:18:51.519So there have been studies done about that show that you know ethnic minority applicants receive much fewer callbacks than people with so-called, you know, kind of white-sounding names.
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00:19:02.880Um, women also leaving custody can face housing and childcare barriers that can make it really difficult to find work, but then also to, you know, maintain work, hold down work.
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00:19:04.640So these schemes are really important.
00:19:04.960 -->
00:19:22.000Um, but you know, like anything, it's it can only work if they actually kind of are mindful of and seek to address this kind of structural inequalities in you know hiring practices, in you know, finding houses, and not kind of not framing these things as just purely skills deficits.
00:19:22.480 -->
00:19:29.839So, you know, the goal is of course to keep young people from avoiding criminal lifestyles and you know involvement in like kind of youth violence.
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00:19:45.039And you know, young people are uh very wary of you know what the system might tell them about you know, kind of aspirational messaging, about opportunity, you know, pull yourself up by your bootstraps and all those sorts of like all that kind of old rhetoric.
00:19:45.279 -->
00:19:56.960What they actually need is access to stable work, paid training, mentoring programs are really key, especially for you know um heavily policed, racialized, criminalized communities.
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00:20:03.359Um, practical things like transport support, um, mental health support, all of these things are all really significant.
00:20:03.680 -->
00:20:14.319You know, having interrupt uninterrupted education, um, all of those things are really key to providing young people with the tools to um find kind of find and hold down the kind of secure work.
00:20:14.480 -->
00:20:22.240So I think employment schemes kind of work best when they intentionally seek to reduce the gap between exclusion and belonging.
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00:20:38.480Um, because work isn't just about income, you know, it's also about um how young people see themselves about what you know, what hopes they have for themselves, about either identity and their future orientation and um social protection and all those things.
00:20:38.720 -->
00:20:52.000Um so, you know, for young women specifically, for young black women specifically, I think employment schemes need to be really linked to things like childcare, transport, um, trauma-informed practice, safeguarding.
00:20:52.079 -->
00:20:56.960Um, and that's how they can become useful for the people that really kind of need them the most.
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00:21:07.279So they really just do need to have this kind of deeply embedded anti-racist, anti-poverty, and anti-exclusion strategy within them for them to actually be workable and helpful.
00:21:07.920 -->
00:21:08.319Yeah.
00:21:08.559 -->
00:21:15.920When you were talking about the um the surnames in terms of how uh individuals feel like it impacts their employment.
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00:21:28.319My mum, she her maiden name was a Middle Eastern Muslim surname, and she felt like in the 80s it was impacting her chances of getting employment, and the fact that that's still prevalent today.
00:21:28.559 -->
00:21:31.200Yeah, it's just yeah, it's not just the 80s.
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00:21:43.279They've done studies recently that, like, you know, they'll send out identical CVs and some of them will say, you know, have like a stereotypically Muslim name or say, um, Ali Mohammed on it or something.
00:21:43.359 -->
00:21:48.720And then same CV with a generic British name, you know, John Smith.
00:21:48.960 -->
00:21:52.160And John Smith gets consistent, you know, considerably more.
00:21:52.400 -->
00:21:56.400I can't remember the exact number, to be honest with you, but you know, considerably more callbacks.
00:21:58.880 -->
00:22:07.119And um Yeah, I mean I think that kind of really speaks to how deeply embedded um, you know, these kind of racialized ideas are.
00:22:07.200 -->
00:22:15.519Um I think Britain often likes to think of itself as being kind of post-racial, um, especially in comparison to America.
00:22:15.680 -->
00:22:22.079But I think the reality is um, you know, we've never really have reckoned with our racialized history in Britain.
00:22:22.160 -->
00:22:30.319We've never really held the we haven't really held up the mirror to ourselves um kind of historically or how these things kind of play out today.
00:22:30.480 -->
00:22:39.680So what that means is these, you know, kind of really deeply embedded racialized inequalities just continue from generation to generation without ever being examined.
00:22:41.359 -->
00:22:58.640Moving on to more policing, uh, do you feel like there is adequate police training to you know prevent that racist-driven policing that and if you feel like there should be more rigid anti-racist programs or learning in early education to have that sort of early intervention?
00:22:58.960 -->
00:23:05.039Um well, building on what we were just saying, no, I don't think start policing training is adequate.
00:23:05.200 -->
00:23:07.519Um because we can we can see it's not.
00:23:07.680 -->
00:23:15.519We can see the continued racial disproportionality in stop and search, in arrest, in the use of force.
00:23:15.920 -->
00:23:27.839Um so I think you know, and this is after, you know, reform attempt after reform attempt, you know, we've been talking about racialized policing in you know for a long time.
00:23:27.920 -->
00:23:29.839It's not it's not a new discussion.
00:23:30.400 -->
00:23:48.880Um so in my research, like you know, I spoke to people who experienced really heavy policing, really heavy and you know, overtly violent policing in the 70s and the 80s, and you know, kind of pre, you know, the McPherson report, you know, pre-Seven Lawrence's murder, pre-the finding of institutional racism.
00:23:49.119 -->
00:23:54.079Um, and I did, I mean, I guess you could say there are some there are some differences.
00:23:54.319 -->
00:24:12.480So, like, you know, the the the older generations who I spoke to, they had really intense stories of police violence, police racism being called slurs, um, you know, uh with this that's like with a kind of like avert violence and uh a distinct lack of accountability.
00:24:12.720 -->
00:24:18.799So when I speak to young people now, I guess the slurs have probably decreased decreased.
00:24:18.960 -->
00:24:37.039Some of the examples of extreme violence have decreased, but the way the young people kind of see it, the way they experience that policing, um, there are very few differences between the way, you know, a young person in 2026 might talk about policing as somebody in an older person who experienced policing in the 70s.
00:24:37.119 -->
00:24:43.359Um, police training, policing training is part of it, but it's also just not a question of individual bias.
00:24:43.519 -->
00:24:45.279It's this is an institutional problem.
00:24:45.440 -->
00:24:52.480It's about kind of structural decision making, who is seen as criminal, what neighborhoods of the police want to target, target, sorry.
00:24:52.720 -->
00:24:59.119Um so you know, these stop and search disparities they persist despite reforms because it's bigger than training.
00:24:59.279 -->
00:25:06.240Um, you know, but at the same time, the police are simply a reflection of the society and the culture that they come from.
00:25:06.400 -->
00:25:12.480Um, so while we have this evidence of disproportionate outcomes across the system, it's not about individual prejudice.
00:25:12.559 -->
00:25:14.000This is an institutional practice.
00:25:14.160 -->
00:25:28.880The police is still institutionally racist in the way that it was in the 70s, in the way that it was when Stephen Lawrence was killed, and the way that it was after we had this term institutional racism applied to the police in the McPherson report in 1999 and today.
00:25:29.039 -->
00:25:35.839So it's a broader issue of the really deeply embedded racism in Britain, inside and outside of the criminal justice system.
00:25:35.920 -->
00:25:38.559And the, you know, the police is simply an operation of that.
00:25:38.720 -->
00:25:43.680It's simply the mechanism for that to be shown, displayed, enforced.
00:25:43.839 -->
00:25:48.720You know, so that's why anti-racist work, I think, needs to start really early.
00:25:48.960 -->
00:25:53.440It needs to start in way before, way before they're getting police training.
00:25:53.599 -->
00:25:56.960It needs to start in schools and in community settings.
00:25:57.119 -->
00:26:02.319But it also, of course, needs to continue in professional training and in institutional governance.
00:26:02.480 -->
00:26:13.680Um, if we're thinking about school, you know, really early education has to include the history of empire, the history of migration, the history of race, history of institutional racism.
00:26:14.000 -->
00:26:26.720I going to school in the like early 2000s, there was no history of British colonial endeavor on my syllabus, on my history syllabus.
00:26:26.960 -->
00:26:29.440Um, and I think that's part of the problem kind of more broadly.
00:26:29.519 -->
00:26:35.440Like people are not necessarily aware of like some of these, the racialized histories of, you know, the British Empire.
00:26:35.680 -->
00:26:42.319Um, so I think you know, if it will go some way to, you know, giving some people some of that like kind of broader context early.
00:26:42.400 -->
00:26:54.799Um, so they don't encounter the idea of race as a thing that is either in the past or you know, something that's like a polarized issue that we need to debate the existence of, um, and that, you know, they might need to take a defensive stance on.
00:26:54.960 -->
00:27:13.759Um, you know, so for example, you know, in practice, you know, a police officer who hasn't been trained to understand something like how black girls experience adultification, they may misread what is actually distress as defiance, or they may misread assertiveness as threat, and that can lead to, you know, criminal justice outcomes.
00:27:13.920 -->
00:27:27.680So it's really important for kind of long-term cultural change, but it also has to be paired with institutional reform and an acknowledgement of the significance of race when we talk about the experiences of black people in the criminal justice system.
00:27:28.720 -->
00:27:35.680Yeah, I mean, you were talking about the um how about how Britain sort of likes to take pride in how they're so different to America.
00:27:35.920 -->
00:27:36.160Yeah.
00:27:36.400 -->
00:27:49.039Um, but in school, I mean, I went, I started secondary school in 2015, and there was it was talking about history, it was just a lot about slavery in America.
00:27:49.279 -->
00:27:50.880Nothing about the history of Britain.
00:27:51.119 -->
00:27:54.319So like it still hasn't changed in the service.
00:27:54.640 -->
00:27:58.400Yeah, I mean, so we had, I don't know, we so we had like, you know, the Tudors.
00:27:58.880 -->
00:28:07.680Yeah, we skipped a few hundred years worth of history, and then we had like, I don't know, the Victorians or something, and then you know, World War II.
00:28:07.920 -->
00:28:21.279But you know, there's a big and conspicuous gap somewhere in the middle there about like what Britain was doing and how that leads to migration patterns in you know the 21st century.
00:28:21.440 -->
00:28:31.359Um, and you know, like it really kind of shines a light on like the hypocrisy around like the shift to the right uh politically in Britain kind of more broadly.
00:28:31.519 -->
00:28:41.839But I mean a lot of that, and again, that is an institutional, you know, that's like a a byproduct of the decision to not teach, not frame the curriculum in that way.
00:28:42.000 -->
00:28:43.599I mean, maybe, maybe it's changed.
00:28:43.680 -->
00:28:44.000I don't know.
00:28:44.079 -->
00:28:56.079I don't know if the curriculum has changed in a kind of post-like 2020 BLM context, but I do know that I only really became aware of colonialism when I kind of taught it to myself at university.
00:28:56.160 -->
00:28:59.200You know, it wasn't a thing part of my syllabus at school.
00:28:59.680 -->
00:29:14.640Talking about um with far-right political parties, um, in terms of you know, the rising of reform party, how do you feel like that's sort of impacting the safety of women of colour in in especially with like in terms of stop and search?
00:29:16.240 -->
00:29:20.480I think it's impacting it quite significantly, but mainly around rhetoric.
00:29:20.640 -->
00:29:33.519I guess you could say, I think it's important to separate, you know, crime safety discourse, which is what reform likes to amplify, supposedly, and then actual evidence-based, you know, policy impact.
00:29:33.759 -->
00:29:47.200The thing with parties like reform is their whole thing is they're framing social problems through anti-immigrant discourse and kind of cultural panic and cultural anxieties about you know the British way of life and all that kind of stuff.
00:29:47.359 -->
00:29:59.200But the reality is they can have a re- those those things can have really serious implications for women of color because it shifts public attention away from structural violence that women are experiencing to racialized blame.
00:29:59.440 -->
00:30:10.720What they do is they focus on criminalizing men, claiming that they're seeking to protect women, implicitly only white British women, and you know, but in reality what they're actually doing is leaving women overlooked.
00:30:10.880 -->
00:30:14.160Obviously, their goal is divisive and their goal is political.
00:30:14.319 -->
00:30:23.599So they're using something that they think um, you know, they're they're kind of claiming that they're taking this protective stance, but of course it's not about making women safer.
00:30:23.759 -->
00:30:41.119Um, lots of research on political, you know, this these kind of politicized examples of law and order rhetoric show that what it does is in reality just increases suspicion towards minority communities across genders at the same time as you know reinforcing really old racialized threat narratives.
00:30:41.200 -->
00:30:48.720So in practice, that means that, you know, safety, the concept of safety, is being invoked in really selective and exclusionary ways.
00:30:48.799 -->
00:30:53.359The woman being protected as imagined by Tommy Robinson and his gang.
00:30:53.519 -->
00:31:00.480Um, you know, that woman is implicitly a white native woman, white British woman, a culturally familiar woman.
00:31:00.559 -->
00:31:03.279That's, you know, that's the idea that they have in their minds.
00:31:03.519 -->
00:31:10.559While women of color are treated as peripheral, irrelevant, or even, you know, action actively suspicious.
00:31:10.799 -->
00:31:20.559Um so that really matters because, you know, black and brown women are already navigating misogyny, navigating racism, Islamophobia, xenophobia in public life.
00:31:20.720 -->
00:31:30.559And when the political discourse becomes heightened in the way that it is now, that what that does is it actually just increases fear rather than, you know, enhancing security for anyone.
00:31:30.720 -->
00:31:36.880Um, one of the clearest examples with this kind of protecting women rhetoric is like anti-immigration politics.
00:31:36.960 -->
00:31:42.960You know, they kind of ignore the actual infrastructures in which women are harmed and the ones that keep women safe.
00:31:43.200 -->
00:31:49.440So, you know, housing, welfare, schools, healthcare, um, you know, intimate partner violence, abuse services.
00:31:49.519 -->
00:31:57.119It's not none of it is about strengthening those, funding those, you know, like um increasing awareness about resources.
00:31:57.279 -->
00:32:00.160It's about criminalizing groups as suspects.
00:32:00.240 -->
00:32:15.440So you to use that rhetoric to kind of whip up, to get people in a frenzy, you know, like justify stronger law and you know, law enforcement responses, you know, stronger immigration policing, you know, increasing police powers, all those things.
00:32:15.519 -->
00:32:24.319So you can see the link between the political rhetoric and the actual like um, you know, the criminal justice experience, you know, people being drawn into the criminal justice system.
00:32:24.480 -->
00:32:30.880So the debate publicly is, you know, fixated on migrants as a kind of as a source of danger, as a source of risk.
00:32:31.039 -->
00:32:41.519But what it does is it also obscures the actual violence, the actual harm towards women taking place in the home, you know, in schools, in workplaces.
00:32:41.599 -->
00:32:45.599Like those are the places where women of all colours are actually at risk.
00:32:45.920 -->
00:32:54.799You know, that politics of fear that's really incompatible with producing the kind of protection that they claim that they, you know, that they're seeking.
00:32:55.279 -->
00:33:06.400Yeah, I mean, you you just uh you touched on earlier about how there was a difference in between, you know, the way black women are treated and the way white women are treated in the criminal justice system.
00:33:06.799 -->
00:33:17.119Um, statistics show about how black women are 22% more likely to be found guilty than white women in magistrates' courts, and that's where you know the vast majority of cases are heard.
00:33:17.359 -->
00:33:25.039What does that kind of tell us about the everyday cases of justice as opposed to the high profile crown court cases people tend to focus on?
00:33:25.359 -->
00:33:26.160It's a good question.
00:33:26.319 -->
00:33:27.920I think it's really highly significant.
00:33:28.079 -->
00:33:33.119As you say, you know, magistrates' courts are where the vast majority of criminal cases are heard.
00:33:33.279 -->
00:33:47.279So we might hear about you know the rare, exciting, sexy crown court case, you know, high profile case, but the these magistrate court cases are where the like ordinary machinery of justice is turning, you know.
00:33:47.519 -->
00:33:55.519So like the the importance of magistrates' courts is really in like the routineness of them and you know the the high volume of them.
00:33:55.680 -->
00:34:04.799So that's where this everyday criminalization occurs, where these processes, you know, how they continue into the criminal justice system.
00:34:04.960 -->
00:34:15.199And so, you know, these disparities really kind of shine a light on very large cumulative effects beyond the guilty conviction.
00:34:15.440 -->
00:34:18.000So I mean it's quite a considerable disparity.
00:34:18.079 -->
00:34:20.800Like 22% is like that's not a small number.
00:34:21.039 -->
00:34:29.519And I it just speaks to how deeply embedded these inequalities are in the lower, kind of more routine tiers of the system.
00:34:29.840 -->
00:34:33.599In the magistrate court, cases are being channed quickly.
00:34:33.840 -->
00:34:40.159Um, you know, that's the the cases are less expensive, there's less scrutiny, they're kind of seen as less high stakes.
00:34:40.239 -->
00:34:50.320And what that means is, you know, the speed of the operation kind of relies more greatly on things like stereotypes and assumptions of magistrates.
00:34:50.480 -->
00:35:15.679Um, you know, I've come across a lot of research showing that a lot of black defendants will choose to um have a case heard in the Crown Court, even though the potential conviction, sorry, the you know, the sentence is much higher, but because they're kind of they're hoping that having a jury of their peers might go in some way towards minimizing the like kind of you know, the biases they may experience from magistrates, like in the magistrates' court, you know.
00:35:15.760 -->
00:35:25.519So they're kind of, you know, they're kind of almost like kind of taking their chances with a jury of their peers rather than relying on a magistrate, and you know, and they're you know, that is real and that has been ongoing for some time.
00:35:25.679 -->
00:35:56.400Um, so you know, in the magistrate court, things like you know, demeanor or perceptions of demeanor, I should say, perceptions of credibility, whether somebody is seen as compliant, whether somebody is seen as humble, um, these um assumptions about respectability, you know, about like, you know, racialized assumptions about like femininity, all of these things can really influence decisions in ways that are selective, um, that are difficult to detect, but really highly consequential.
00:35:56.639 -->
00:36:06.159So, you know, I think that's why the focus shouldn't be on just on high-profile cases where we see these extraordinary miscarriages of justice.
00:36:06.400 -->
00:36:10.159We don't have to look really any further than the ordinary cases.
00:36:10.320 -->
00:36:14.000They reveal the system's kind of baseline values.
00:36:14.159 -->
00:36:26.079Um, and you know, that statistic kind of that really demonstrates that that structural bias is happening every day and it's you know administratively normalized um, you know, in the court system.
00:36:27.199 -->
00:36:45.119Yeah, and you know, we've touched upon um early intervention, policing, stop and search, systematic racism, and we see how in the UK population black women make up 3% of it, but 8.9% of the prison population.
00:36:45.440 -->
00:36:53.920Can we can we say that all these factors kind of contribute to why we're seeing such an overrepresentation of black women in the prisons?
00:36:54.159 -->
00:36:54.880Yeah, absolutely.
00:36:54.960 -->
00:37:04.079It's all of these things, you know, it's all these things that we've touched on, and like those figures, they really point to this enduring problem of racial disproportionality.
00:37:04.239 -->
00:37:10.480And you know, they they can't be explained by individual behavior or individual factors.
00:37:10.639 -->
00:37:27.280It's a pattern, and it's a pattern that tells us also that prisons being used as a substitute for social problems, you know, for failures, you know, institutional failings in housing, in safeguarding wealthcare, well, sorry, welfare, mental health, all these things.
00:37:27.440 -->
00:37:43.199So, you know, black women are overrepresented in prison because of uh, well, all of things we've been speaking about, you know, a combination of historical and contemporary factors, structural racism, stop and search, poverty, insecure housing, um, and criminalization of survival strategies.
00:37:43.280 -->
00:37:52.559You know, black women are much more likely to be watched, arrested, prosecuted, imprisoned for behavior that is often rooted in survival and adversity, you know?
00:37:52.719 -->
00:38:01.599So, you know, for example, like you know, lower low-level offending can often be linked to poverty or coercion, coercive relationships.
00:38:01.679 -->
00:38:13.679Um, that can lead to, you know, criminal justice um being drawn into the criminal justice system, whereas, you know, something like community-based support would have been much more of an appropriate response.
00:38:13.920 -->
00:38:24.800You know, the prison system reflects these wider inequalities and it really kind of highlights the deep structural disadvantage a lot of black families kind of um live within in contemporary Britain.
00:38:25.039 -->
00:38:38.400Um, you know, things like housing exclusion, for example, really matter because housing instability increases vulnerability and increases the likelihood of um, you know, entering into the criminal justice system, it could increase vulnerability.
00:38:38.559 -->
00:38:50.800So, you know, a black woman whose housing is unstable, whose health needs aren't being met, who is supporting children is much more exposed to criminalization than a black woman with stable income and housing.
00:38:50.960 -->
00:38:56.639Um, and you know, it should never be forgotten the prison as the endpoint of multiple system failures.
00:38:56.800 -->
00:38:58.079It's not the corrective.
00:38:58.239 -->
00:39:00.719Um, so it's never about individual offending.
00:39:00.880 -->
00:39:15.039Um, prison overrepresentation is kind of, you should really think about it as like kind of the end point of a long chain of structural inequality rather than as evidence of you know propensity to criminality among some of these communities.
00:39:16.320 -->
00:39:22.159Yeah, I mean, we're talking about women in prison and with a focus on sort of maternal care and health care.
00:39:22.559 -->
00:39:31.519The Prison Reform Trust's you know 2025 report found that two-thirds of mother and baby units within prison are operating above safe capacity.
00:39:31.840 -->
00:39:40.880Um, you know, when a system is already overwhelmed, we can fall into assumptions that communities less tended to will fall through those cracks.
00:39:41.039 -->
00:39:44.880So, where can where can we say that leaves black and brown mothers?
00:39:45.199 -->
00:39:49.679Well, as you say, you know, the system's already under really severe strain.
00:39:49.840 -->
00:40:03.519And you know, women who are the least well-served by institutions, racialized women, marginalized women, are also then likely to be the most vulnerable or the most being mishandled by the system.
00:40:03.679 -->
00:40:21.199So black mothers in the in this context, they can face compounded disadvantage because they're more likely to be kind of considered as undeserving, the less protected, being considered as more difficult by staff, you know, misunderstood language barriers, all these things.
00:40:21.360 -->
00:40:27.920So institutions that already operate with racial bias, it really kind of compounds the harms that these black mothers may face.
00:40:28.079 -->
00:40:48.480So overcrowding matters ethically, you know, it reduces privacy, it reduces personalized support, uh, things like breastfeeding support, mental health care, um, and it reduces the ability of the prison system to respond to respond to crises in a way that is, you know, humane and empathetic and trauma-informed.
00:40:48.639 -->
00:40:56.159So, you know, for example, a black mother in a crowded mother and baby unit, they may struggle to get you know kind of consistent attention.
00:40:56.400 -->
00:41:04.320Their concerns might be dismissed or her communication might be misread through racial stereotypes is the kind of thing that can actually happen in practice.
00:41:04.400 -->
00:41:11.039Um, so the deeper issue is that overcrowding turns what should be a safeguarding environment into a resource battle.
00:41:11.119 -->
00:41:13.119You know, it's about resource scarcity.
00:41:13.199 -->
00:41:17.119And scarcity tends to magnify inequality, as you said, you know.
00:41:17.199 -->
00:41:26.480Um so when we already have a strain on resources, the people, the group that is seen as less deserving, less worthy, seen as kind of more inherently dangerous or risky.
00:41:26.559 -->
00:41:34.800Um, you know, the the majority of the, you know, they're kind of gonna bear the majority of the um the dismissal, the routine dismissal.
00:41:34.960 -->
00:41:40.639So for black mothers, that can mean being the first to be deprioritized when resources run thin.
00:41:40.880 -->
00:41:51.119Um yeah, so you know, black mothers are kind of facing this kind of these additional layers of scrutiny due to racialized perceptions of risk and of parenting.
00:41:51.280 -->
00:42:07.840Um and that can have a really have a really long-term impact on children, of course, like you know, being placed into care systems, and then all the like the disadvantages that can flow from that intergenerationally, you know, as they become adults and as they then also become the racialized subject.
00:42:08.000 -->
00:42:21.360Um so you know, these um this inequality that takes place in prison is really just one, you know, one of the many pieces of the puzzle in terms of like how black women experience and navigate the criminal justice system and beyond.
00:42:22.239 -->
00:42:36.559Yeah, you touched on about how children are then impacted and how it's basically just a vicious circle, and how you it's from birth to age two, it's very it's considered a critical time for bonding and development.
00:42:36.719 -->
00:42:47.360And separation during this time, or a woman, uh woman, a black or brown woman that is in prison, um, it risks serious lifelong consequences for that child.
00:42:47.519 -->
00:42:59.039So for black children whose mothers are in prison during this window, it almost seems like we're just storing up further disadvantage in a system that already over-surveils black communities.
00:43:00.480 -->
00:43:01.440Yeah, absolutely.
00:43:01.599 -->
00:43:10.639So, yeah, a separation during the first few years, the first like really critical years, can have really profound and lasting consequences.
00:43:10.800 -->
00:43:17.039Um, you know, that period is really critical for attachment, uh, development, emotional regulation.
00:43:17.199 -->
00:43:29.119And, you know, specifically for black children, the harm is amplified when maternal imprisonment occurs in this kind of broader context of over-surveillance and intergenerational inequality.
00:43:29.280 -->
00:43:34.079You know, so you know, as they get older, kind of moving into this world that's hostile towards them.
00:43:34.239 -->
00:43:37.440Beyond the family issue, it's a public policy issue.
00:43:37.599 -->
00:43:40.000Um, you know, this is a structural issue.
00:43:40.159 -->
00:43:44.400Prison prisons aren't designed around caregiving relationships.
00:43:44.559 -->
00:43:59.360And for black children, those harms are then compounded by existing inequalities in education once they join school, thinking about things like exclusion, being considered unruly, being considered aggressive, all those things, but then also kind of health and social care systems.
00:43:59.440 -->
00:44:07.199So it's Like you know, kind of layering these disadvantages across generations via this kind of early institutional separation.
00:44:07.360 -->
00:44:17.599Um, so the custodial punishment doesn't, you know, of the mother doesn't just impact the mother, it also impacts their children and you know the kin networks and community life more broadly.
00:44:17.760 -->
00:44:33.840And you know, and that's why alternatives to custody for mothers of very young children are, you know, not just the rational response, but also the ethical and empathetic response when we're thinking about child development and when we're thinking about what the appropriate social policy response should be.
00:44:34.639 -->
00:44:35.039Yeah.
00:44:35.360 -->
00:44:49.599And moving on to more health care, in prisons we see how individuals are disproportionately diagnosed at a later stage of cancer as a focus and often caused by infrequent cancer screenings.
00:44:49.760 -->
00:44:56.320Um, focusing on black women in particular, they face outside of prison, they face significant health disparities.
00:44:56.400 -->
00:45:06.480You know, they're being impacted by systemic racism, they face systemic healthcare neglect and systems that are historically under equipped to handle black women's specific medical needs.
00:45:06.960 -->
00:45:15.920What do you think about the this information that reflects about how UK prisons are run in terms of health care and how certain communities are treated?
00:45:16.800 -->
00:45:32.239Um, well, the data kind of reflects a prison system that is tends too quickly to be reactive rather than preventive and is often poorly aligned with the realities of um, you know, disparities of health in um for black and minority women.
00:45:32.480 -->
00:45:40.400So um, you know, for black women, there's been this kind of long-standing racialized disbelief about their suffering.
00:45:40.800 -->
00:45:49.039So black women have had this like kind of documented history of institutionalized um overlooking across healthcare systems.
00:45:49.119 -->
00:45:56.800You know, we've been talking a lot about the criminal justice system that you know, these same inequalities they you know they unfold across all institutions.
00:45:57.280 -->
00:46:11.440Um, you know, so the the the examples that I I mean I'm thinking of, like, you know, the this kind of casserole environment allows women who are really already vulnerable, their reproductive health, for example, to be neglected.
00:46:11.519 -->
00:46:13.840And you know, those failures can really become fatal.
00:46:13.920 -->
00:46:16.400So, you know, you mentioned kind of late cancer diagnosis.
00:46:16.559 -->
00:46:37.599Um, black women face racial inequality in healthcare out access and in outcomes, and prison can just intensify those inequalities through things like delayed screening, um, poor referral pathways, staff not, you know, being cognizant of how to recognize which sort of how symptoms present in different people.
00:46:37.840 -->
00:46:40.079I remember like having a rash once.
00:46:40.480 -->
00:46:41.679I had a rash once.
00:46:42.079 -->
00:46:45.840Um, and I spoke to the GP and they were like, what colour is it?
00:46:45.920 -->
00:46:48.000And I was like, it's brown, like my skin.
00:46:48.159 -->
00:46:50.480And they were like, you know, they were like, what colour is it?
00:46:50.559 -->
00:46:51.679I was like, I don't know what to tell you.
00:46:51.760 -->
00:46:53.039It's brown like my skin.
00:46:53.199 -->
00:47:04.559Um and you know, historically, obviously, like in terms of testing, there hasn't been an understanding always of how symptoms might present on, you know, with in different on different bodies, you know, and different skin colours.
00:47:04.719 -->
00:47:12.480So sometimes staff cannot, you know, part of the problem can be staff aren't trained to recognize um, you know, how symptoms look different on different people.
00:47:12.639 -->
00:47:20.320Um, but you know, evidence also consistently shows delayed diagnosis in prisons and you know, inconsistent access to screening.
00:47:20.400 -->
00:47:28.639Um, you know, those pre-existing inequalities in the healthcare from the NHS, those are then compounded in custody.
00:47:29.119 -->
00:47:34.639Yeah, like you said, prisons just almost magnify that whole idea of systemic issues.
00:47:34.960 -->
00:47:35.519Exactly, yeah.
00:47:36.960 -->
00:48:03.360Um, and you spoke about your rash in the butt with I was gonna say, um, I I do work as a support worker and we have first aid courses every year, and it was only this year that when someone's you know, very feeling if they fainted or passed out in a recovery position, and they say about how um in general they used to say about how a person's colour on their face would have flushed.
00:48:03.519 -->
00:48:03.599Yeah.
00:48:03.760 -->
00:48:12.079It's only recently like Sus said, if it's a darker skinned person, you have to look on like um on the inner lip to see if their colour has changed.
00:48:12.239 -->
00:48:13.679It just made me think about that.
00:48:13.760 -->
00:48:20.559How it's just why is it only now that that sort of information has been given to us and to medical professionals?
00:48:20.880 -->
00:48:21.599Yeah, yeah.
00:48:21.760 -->
00:48:23.599I mean, it's it's really quite unfathomable.
00:48:23.679 -->
00:48:28.880I've only been hearing about that kind of thing in the last couple of years, you know, in the last in the last few years.
00:48:28.960 -->
00:48:39.920And you know, think about like the number of people who, I don't know, could have been saved, could have had sooner medical intervention if there just was more awareness of how symptoms present on different people.
00:48:40.000 -->
00:48:44.320Like, you know, the and this isn't this is all not just a race thing, it's also a gender thing, you know.
00:48:44.480 -->
00:48:54.880A lot of the the um in in the medical textbooks, the um, I guess the like analysis of symptoms has tended historically to be, you know, testing being done on men.
00:48:55.119 -->
00:48:58.159And I think like that's it's kind of it's still the case.
00:48:58.239 -->
00:49:01.199So there's like a there's a real blind spot.
00:49:01.360 -->
00:49:03.199I mean, it's too big to be called a blind spot.
00:49:03.280 -->
00:49:12.480There's a real kind of lack of awareness about how different symptoms present on different people and on different bodies, and of course that has like a really significant impact on intervention.
00:49:13.440 -->
00:49:14.079Yeah.
00:49:14.559 -->
00:49:23.840And yeah, we've we've spoken about how it's not really changed as Islamic racism in terms of from 70s onwards.
00:49:24.079 -->
00:49:33.519Uh sort of brings me to your paper, your research on suspect communities, you know, focusing on policing race and black Britons.
00:49:33.920 -->
00:49:42.480Um, and you highlight how little has changed policing black communities since the 70s, with there being negative and racist German perceptions from authority figures.
00:49:42.639 -->
00:49:47.199How old do you feel it is in 2026 regarding black and brown women?
00:49:47.519 -->
00:49:54.559Um, yeah, I mean, I think it's uh I think a lot of what's changed is the rhetoric and like the vocabulary around these things.
00:49:54.719 -->
00:49:59.519So I think you know, rhetoric and policing priorities priorities have changed over time.
00:49:59.679 -->
00:50:07.199We've seen kind of different eras where there's been kind of different focus on um a specific policing issue.
00:50:07.360 -->
00:50:16.800So in the 70s it was mugging, um, in the 80s it was riots, in the 90s it was, you know, yadis, drugs.
00:50:16.960 -->
00:50:21.920And then in the in the last like 20 years or so, we've seen a real considerable shift towards discourses of
